Social Media

Mari Smith is the Queen of Facebook, a social media trainer whose expertise extends well beyond Facebook. She is the author of a terrific new book called The New Relationship Marketing, and I’m thrilled I had a chance to chat with her about how you can best manage your professional Facebook presence. Watch the short video below for great advice from one of the best social media trainers in the business.

Facebook has recently launched what they’re calling “frictionless” apps. They are essentially applications that will post shares on your behalf whenever you do anything using the app. It means your Facebook stream will likley see more content posted automatically on your behalf by the app (if you opt in) and on behalf of everyone you’re friends with who has also opted in.

As this recent article in HuffPo points out, it’s kind of a seminal moment for Facebook because it represents a transition from the experience as something more curated to something extremely active and in real-time. You can choose to opt out of the application, or to adjust what gets posted and to whom, but you will receive the updates from those who have opted in and may have to fiddle with your settings for each person if you’d like to turn down the volume on any or all of them.

These updates will get posted to your Facebook Timeline, the more dynamic and rich version of the personal profile that everyone will soon be upgraded to. 60 apps have launched so far tied to companies like Ticketmaster and Autotrader, meaning your interactions with these organizations will be posted if you’ve opted in.

In other Facebook app news, here is a list of 23 really interesting apps that might be helpful to you, your business or cause. The list was released by Social Media Today earlier this month.The apps range from those that let that you create your own coupons for your website to event calendars you can add to your Facebook pages.

A facebook page is intended for business, allowing you to direct people to your site and corporately brand your page. It does not give you the same opportunities to experience the postings of the users they way you can with a personal profile. In other words, with a page, your fans can see your posts but they can’t see yours.

You can have a personal profile and a page that you use for business. You cannot have two different personal profiles. You get one personal identity on Facebook, and they have strict rules about registering under your real name, something Salman Rushdie just challenged when Facebook tried to make him use his given name, which he hasn’t used in decades.

Which brings me to another point: consistency. You might want to maintain the same identity across all social media platforms. For example, I have just set up a business Facebook page for me, Susan McLennan. It is consistent with my personal profile on Facebook of the same name, and also what I use for LinkedIn and Twitter. My Susan Mclennan business Facebook page at this point is nothing to write home about. I’ve only just launched the website for my name. You’ll see it evolve in the coming weeks from these humble beginnings hopefully to something much more interesting, engaging and useful. I might even crowd source key elements of it. Why should I have all the fun?

It’s important to know that a Facebook profile is capped at 5000 friends, so once you exceed that, you will be more reliant on having a page that can quickly redirect your fans and friends to your website or other portal where you can engage them, call them to action, etc. Ensuring that your Facebook page and profile are consistent with your website is really important because users like consistency across the various platforms.You may have noticed that in yourself in your own wanderings through the interwebs!

If all of this is a little overwhelming, don’t despair. I will add content in the coming while that will help demystify the set up process for those newer to trying to use Facebook for business or cause related purposes.

Facebook has now surpasses 800 million users and it is the largest social networking site in the world. It’s where your customers and donors are. So it’s where you need to be too.